Russian Engineers Race to Save Troubled Mars Moon Probe

[Dowly]

Russian engineers are scrambling to try to save the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft,
which was launched Tuesday (Nov. 8) but has failed to head toward Mars as
planned.

http://www.space.com/13556-russia-sa...ars-probe.html


Note: 09 November 2011 10:38 AM ET (Eastern Time)
------

Well that got far.

[TLAM Strike]

Mars: The Graveyard of the Solar System.

[Oberon]

It's defecting to America!

Hunt for Red Phobos

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Oberon

It's defecting to America!

Hunt for Red Phobos

All I can do is grunt.

[Jimbuna]

Bet red not black.

[Torplexed]

It's ironic. The old Soviet Union had an excellent track record for landing probes on Venus (although the corrosive atmosphere did them in pretty quick) but seemed to always fail abysmally with the Red Planet. Now even post-Soviet Russia continues to struggle with the Mars 'Curse.'

[SgtPotato]

Originally Posted by Oberon

It's defecting to America!

Hunt for Red Phobos

Red Phobos standing by...

[Torplexed]

With the remaining power in the on board batteries the Russian flight engineers figure they have roughly two weeks to figure out the spacecraft's problem and light the candle.

If not, we have to worry about a 28,600 pound piece of scrap metal in a decaying orbit.

[papa_smurf]

This is not just bad news for the Russians, but also for the Chinese as this is carrying their first Mars probe. Methinks they were a bit over ambitious by launching a probe that weighed 13 tonnes, (more than twice the weight of the Cassini-Huygens probe) to get rid of their Mars curse.

[Torplexed]

One can summarize the news about the last few day's efforts to save Phobos-Grunt in three words: there is none. At least nothing official.

The fact is that neither ESA nor Russia has reported any contact with the spacecraft despite all their efforts. And without any contact with the spacecraft, or official statements from Roscosmos, it's impossible to know whether it's alive or dead, salvageable or about to become another (unusually dangerous) man-made object falling out of the sky at an unknown future time and place. It looks grim for the mission at this point.

[Oberon]

We get signal

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15850516

Main Screen Turn On

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by Oberon

We get signal

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15850516

Main Screen Turn On

When I saw a new post in this thread after having read the news story this morning, these were exactly the words I was expecting to see

[soopaman2]

Good luck to them.

Russia is the only hope for space exploration anymore, thanks to Americas incessant need to dismantle any funding that isn't foreign aid, military expediture, corporate/political cronyism.

I am sure Nasa will get back on track, once the patriots in Washington DC finally finish starving out our pensioners, and dropping a deuce on the middle class working man.

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by soopaman2

Good luck to them.

Russia is the only hope for space exploration anymore, thanks to Americas incessant need to dismantle any funding that isn't foreign aid, military expediture, corporate/political cronyism.

Don't know if I'd be that cynical. Nasa successfully dispatched the one-ton rover Curiosity on it's way to Mars yesterday. I guess Congress forgot to axe that one.

Meanwhile, more grim news for Phobos-Grunt.

New European attempts to contact Phobos-Grunt fail

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/

Published: 2011 Nov. 25; updated Nov. 26

A roller coaster ride effort to contact the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft continued Friday, as Russia's stranded probe remained silent during its passes over the Australian ground station, which managed to establish first communications with the spacecraft in the previous days.

When the first opportunity of the day to downlink telemetry from Phobos-Grunt came to ESA's station in Perth nothing was heard from the spacecraft. According to ESA, the slots for communication, timed to coincide when Phobos–Grunt was passing over in direct line-of-sight with the station, began at 20:12 GMT and ran until 04:04 GMT. Each lasted just 6–8 minutes, providing very limited windows for sending commands and receiving a response.

"Our Russian colleagues provided a full set of telecommands for us to send up," Wolfgang Hell, ESA's Phobos–Grunt Service Manager was quoted on the agency's web site, "and Perth station was set to use the same techniques and configurations that worked earlier. But we observed no downlink radio signal from the spacecraft."

[nikimcbee]

Originally Posted by SgtPotato

Red Phobos standing by...